Pets (well, perhaps not dogs) are not as stupid as people think. Instinct is a wunnerful thang. No cat in my house has ever even attempted to eat anything growing in the house and the only plants they chewed on OUTside was grass (helps with digestion or something - which most people would call ermmm, vomiting up hairballs etc lol). There are over 3,000 plants in North America alone that are supposedly toxic or at least slightly toxic. Most not deadly (except cow parsnip, castor beans and potato leaves). "Oddly enough" very few animals (or people for that matter) have a problem with plants. Even if kids or pets ate them, they'd have to eat an awful LOT of them to get truly ill (and they'd throw up long before they got to that point). Sorry for the gory details, but lilies are reallly low on the danger list for any critter. Deer, in particular, LOVE them, so avoid planting them if you don't want to attract deer/moose/elk to your yard as they eat loads of things including all the fruit/bark off your trees.

Anyway very nice pix of the lilies btw : ))) Mine haven't bloomed yet. The irises have, but the jackrabbits ate them (supposedly poisonous as well lol) so I didn't get a chance to take any pictures, sigh. Oh and the hares are fit as a fiddle : )

Edited by Jakeroo (Sat Jul 19 201409:36 PM)

_________________________
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense- Gertrude Stein

Even if kids or pets ate them, they'd have to eat an awful LOT of them to get truly ill (and they'd throw up long before they got to that point). Sorry for the gory details, but lilies are reallly low on the danger list for any critter.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Lillies are highly toxic to cats. All parts of the plant are toxic but the most toxic component is the flower. Cats can die from kidney failure after ingesting even tiny amounts of this plant. However, the usual danger is not so much from eating them as from brushing up against them, then ingesting the pollens deposited in the fur when the cat grooms itself.

With reference to the two previous postings, I have to say that MotherGoose is spot on. Any Vet will tell you that Lilies can be very dangerous to animals. As MotherGoose explained they don't have to necessarily eat or chew them, just the simple brushing against them and then grooming themselves will do it. As someone who has had a lot of experience with animals for a number of years I have had personal experience of this. We had spathiphyllum lilies in pots in the home and suddenly one of our cats became very ill. After several visits to the vet and she was not getting any better we looked very much like losing her. Tests showed that she had toxins in her liver but as the Vet knew that our cats were confined to the home and enclosed catteries he was a bit non-plussed until I happened to mention the potted plants. I was advised to get rid of them which I did immediately, and having gained this information his treatment changed and so did the condition of the stricken animal. He brought out an illustrated book which showed pictures of plants which are dangerous and can be fatal to animals and lilies featured very prominently, especially the spathiphyllum lily. So be warned cat lovers and cat owners, never grow them in your garden if you have pets, especially cats who regularly groom themselves, or in pots within the home as the risks are far too great to the animals health and well-being.

What a cornucopia this thread is. Well done everyone. I wish we were allowed to add things later, I always take photos for these threads then neglect to post them in time. I keep changing my mind what to post.

When I saw MotherGoose's screensaver, I decided to post my current one, although it was taken in June. Self-taken screensaver/background/wallpapers might be a nice idea for a themed thread one time? I've had seasonal flowers as my backgrounds all year.

This flower is Cupid's Dart; it looks very like a cornflower from afar, I think. Possibly this photo is a bit spoiled by the glare of the sun on the petals, the colour is deeper really.

Mommakat, I am sorry you and your cat had such a bad experience with the plants. I have to admit, I was a little relieved to read Jake's post as none of the cats in my life have ever reacted to lilies or any other plant, and one cat did used to eat plants. My grandmother had a very big heart and used to take in so many strays and problem cats that other people couldn't manage, -- at one stage she had 13 -- and there is no record of any of them having been stricken down by pollen. Cars, yes, my grandfather was not forgiven for that.

Also, one of our Jack Russells once stole and ate an entire chocolate bar, it was one of those super huge gigantic ones that you can only buy at airports. The dog ate most of it before I caught it red pawed. So much for chocolate being poison for dogs. The dog wasn't the least bit sick, nor did it drop down dead until several years later. It did, however, have weight issues.

I've never been able to grow lupins. My mother grew them very successfully on the chalk soil of Wiltshire, constantly seeding, separating, and generally stupendous. But me? I've spent most of my adult life battling with solid clay and even if a lupin would grow in it, the slugs that thrive on that dank, dire dirt have pretty soon arrived to eat a lupin lunch and move on. But this year... a new garden, an enclosed bed with new soil, new no clay allowed soil, surely I could have lupins?

I planted some.

They did nothing. They just sat there, no larger than they had been when in the tray of plug plants. I fed them. I watered them. They sat there. Everything else grew. The lupins loitered. And then one suddenly burst into life! It grew. It had a flower bud pointing above the leaves. It was a live lupin!

The slugs got it.

But this is its brother, the one that got away. I can rest easy now. I have grown a lupin.

_________________________The Hubble Telescope has just picked up a sound from a fraction of a second before the Big Bang. The sound was "Uh oh".

Flopsy, I have exactly the same problem as you with Lupins. When we lived in Bournemouth, no problem, they seeded everywhere, grew with gay abandon. Essex, clay soil, no way. What the slugs and snails don't get the aphids do, same with delphiniums, no luck with them either. Nurture your Lupin that got away.

A nasturtium that survived the apocalyptic downpour we had on Sunday afternoon.

With reference to your comments Chav. I think a qualified Vet would know what he was talking about rather than the ordinary man in the street and whereas it has been not a problem in the past for some people that does not mean it won't be in the future.I prefer to take note of what the experts tell me rather than hearsay or opinions from untrained folk. And having had that experience first hand I can tell you it is something to be very wary of.

With reference to your comments Chav. I think a qualified Vet would know what he was talking about rather than the ordinary man in the street and whereas it has been not a problem in the past for some people that does not mean it won't be in the future.I prefer to take note of what the experts tell me rather than hearsay or opinions from untrained folk. And having had that experience first hand I can tell you it is something to be very wary of.

Yes, I can see that, and fair enough -- and better to be safe than sorry etc -- but nevertheless, when I first started reading such warnings on the world wide web, I could have been fooled into panic, but happily I have not been. I am not wandering around feeding lilies to cats or anything or chocolate to dogs, but nor am I overly concerned. After all, we all know doctors are fallible, and I suspect greatly that lots of health warnings are good guidelines but not necessarily applicable to all patients or situations.

Recently, a friend's baby ingested some plant or other, and we looked it up on the web to see how poisonous it was -- near fatal! Luckily we could also look up the national poisons hotline where we were advised that everything was OK. The kid was fine. I mean, good advice not to leave a baby near random pot plants, but also good advice not to panic, that's all.

If I see some flowers while out and about with my camera, I'll often stop and take a photo with no clue of what sort of flower I'm snapping. This for example is a purple one from the walled garden of Osbourne House, Isle of Wight.